PC Games
Warhammer Online: 40K... of screenies
Were you expecting us to talk about the futuristic spinoff of Warhammer? Nope, the 40K here is the weight of the screens from GOA's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning that landed on our desks (our HDDs, to be exact) this morning. We even have a bit of the backstory behind Thunder Mountain, that big bad Mt. Doom look-a-like that is our banner image for this article. Now, why do we have the sudden urge for cream strawberries and challenging the Dark Lord of this land to come out and face justice - oops, wrong fantasy story!
Thunder Mountain (a.k.a. Karag Dron to Dwarven tongues) holds a central place between the Dwarven capital of Karaz-a-Karak and the greenskin stronghold of Eight Peaks, which means it's hotly contested between these two forces. Whoever can control the mount also controls the prime invasion route to the enemy's capital.
Australian "Game Of The Year" Announced
The Australian developer community isn't exactly the world's biggest, but it's always been a quality-over-quantity kind of affair. Tribes: Vengeance, Freedom Force, Transformers Armada, Destroy All Humans and Rome: Total War being the most noteworthy games Aussie devs have crafted/played a significant role in over the past few years.
It's been a bit of a dry-spell this year, though, with only two major international games seeing release: Destroy All Humans 2 and Medieval II: Total War. The Game Developers' Association of Australia "Game of the Year" award winners were announced yesterday, so the big honours were naturally going to go to one of those two. More @ source.
Xbox sales trail forecasts
Bloomberg.co.uk is reporting this morning that sales of the Xbox in the USA trailed Analysts expectations by 33%, for the month of November. Microsoft apparently shifted 468,000 units, whilst Industry business boffin Bob Austrian (Banc of America Securities) had predicted sales of 700,000.
"Industry growth rates, for both consoles and video games, may be slowing, or at least, seasonally weaker than expected," Austrian commented.
Microsoft spokesperson Molly O'Donnell reacted by suggesting that the latest NPD data was inaccurate, as it excludes sales from Wal-Mart stores, the USA's largest games retailer. Xbox sales through Wal-Mart had apparently doubled in November, according to O'Donnell.
Shares in Microsoft fell slightly at the news, whilst the likes of EA and Activision also saw a decline. - Xbox 360 New Games - Nintendo Fan Forum